Flash Comics #155, DC Comics, September 1965 – Artist: Carmine Infantino.
Flash running the gauntlet of his rouge’s gallery, brilliantly rendered by Carmine Infantino, this is one of my favorite Flash covers.
Hey, what the heck is happening on Pep Comics #155 (I’ve included it at the bottom so you can help), are these metaphors? Are cat people all girls? And what’s that tree supposed to mean? That cover is hard.
Boy do I ever love the style of Tony DeZuniga, check out Girls’ Romances #155 (I included that one too).
Daredevil #155 has a great battle cover, I like the cover to Detective Comics #155 and the cover to Superboy #155 is a bit too much, turn off the Super!
A great comic book cover matching each day of the year, 1 through 365. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.
I like the choice of Flash #155 because on first glance it has everything needed to be the cover of the day – our hero as the central character taking on a gauntlet of bad guys. But don’t look too long, because you began to wonder why a primary DC character had such a weak cast of villains.
Personally, I was favoring Thor #155 – now that is a scary bad guy! – and the cover sets up the expectation of a glorious battle between Thor and Mangog to which Asgardian songs will be sung over barrels of mead.
And I liked the cover of Superboy #155, which I thought worked much better than the multiple Superman images found on Jimmy Olsen #135.
I enjoy seeing the runner ups as well.
Flash—this run was all about colorful, crazy villains. Carmine Infantino was so very, very good creating great costumes and appealing characters. Your choice really captures that.
This is inked by Joe Giella, who I met Terrificon in Massachusetts, just last summer. He was great, told me the story of losing his very first assignment from Stan Lee in 1948, and how Mike Sekowsky helped him make good and save his job. Really sweet guy!
John Broome wrote this issue and deserves most of the credit for the first seven or eight years of this first Flash run. He wrote the vast majority of issues from #105 to #194. Pretty incredible! Gardner Fox was the only other writer in this rea, but still contributed far fewer stories than Boome. See Wikipedia for full details.
They crafted stories that appealed to more mature fans, and put DC squarely in the center of the Silver Age hero revival, for as much as the Marvel Age was kicking in. The letters pages showed this very well, with big name fans like Jerry Bails, Roy Thomas, Paul Gambacinni and others creating a community of fans in DC’s letter pages.
Now Pep, whoa? What? Looks like a cover for an Archie’s Mad House. This should gets your Jimmy Olsen award.
Its good you are giving so many romance books exposure. I used to shun them like many other collectors. I only went after Matt Baker’s superb work, the Simon and Kirby Golden Age titles, and the occasional Bill Ward story in the Quality titles. S&K stories are often just as good as those in their crime titles, and occasionally these “love” tales were in reality crime stories, of good girls gone bad.
Now I am eagerly seeking out pre- and occasionally post-code titles. Such as DC issues (with Infantino, for just one example of cross-over artists), Atlas (with Coletta, Jay Scott Pike), Superior (Iger shop), ACGs with Ogden Whitney art, Quality titles…they are fun, weird, and still very inexpensive, apart fro the keys with outrageous covers.
Ace is one of the lamest companies for stories and inside art, but did some great painted covers early on. All the Avons are cool. Ziff-Davis with more painted covers and a strong line-up of artists, and Eastern (Movie Love, Personal Love) are mostly very good. Even the photo covers are often fun. Look at some of the Miss Americas, for example. For me, all fresh new books to explore.
Michelle Nolan wrote an excellent book, Love on the Racks, about the entire genre, but judging by my (relatively poor) sales on it, most fans still want nothing to do with love and romance. But my gut feeling is that is slowly changing. I see more activity and rising prices. Nolan’s book has gone through three printings, and remains available. Maybe it is younger and middle-aged fans turning on to these–my customer base tends to be older…
Agree with Derrick on Thor 155
Looks like we were mostly aligned on our choices today. (I also dig Detective, but too sedate to make my cut.) Speaking of romance, I am feeling the love for Mangog. I thought I would have to argue too hard for that one, but it turns out that I am in the majority! The sad story is that I had a high grade copy of this but it didn’t really fit, so I ended up selling it for about what I paid, and now is probably worth 3x…
For #156 I have to go with Star Spangled War as a distinctive cover beautifully executed. Others of note: Action, Daredevil (coincidentally Hulk #156 is also a Hulk vs. Hulk issue, but not a great cover), Strange Tales, Wolverine.
From World’s Finest I liked that Bizarro Batman wears a “useless belt”.
Blackhawk: again with the rainbows! I am hoping that the cover of a later issue is the Blackhawks riding on a flying giant rainbow hand.
JOWA to Millie, hands down. Nobody wants to see that.
As an addition to Chris’s list above – Captain America #156 also has a Cap vs. Cap battle cover.
Duh! Great catch Derrick. I think because I was going in alphabetical order and that one didn’t grab me, it was the Daredevil that sensitized me to the Hulk. Maybe #156 had some special Bullpen meaning.